Who is Your King?

[Below you'll find video of today's worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, as well as the text of the message shared. Happy new year!]

Matthew 2:13-23

The moral law of God is, you know, summarized in the Ten Commandments. In the first commandment, God tells us, “You shall have no other gods before Me.” The Small Catechism’s explanation of the commandment tells us, “We should fear, love, and trust in God above all things.” Clarifying things more, The Large Catechism says, “…to have a god is nothing other than trusting and believing Him with the heart…whatever you set your heart on and put your trust in is truly your god.” 

We have a lot of gods in our world, don't we? That's because we tend to set our hearts on things other than God.

As we begin a new year, we need to ask ourselves: Who is our God? Or, who is our King? This is important because the thing we want most in life is to be our own gods.

I bring all of this up for two reasons. First, because whenever we violate any of God’s commandments–and we inevitably do violate His commandments, whether by thought, word, or deed all the time, we also violate the first commandment. When we lie or steal, covet, murder, gossip, take God’s name in vain, or dishonor our parents, we violate the first commandment. That’s true because with every sin, we either worship the sin itself, or worship ourselves by holding our judgments about right and wrong to be superior to God’s judgments, or we do both.

The second reason I bring it up is that the question of who your god is, who is the ultimate authority over your life, is the central question of today’s gospel lesson.

You know the story well. About two years after Jesus’ birth, Magi from the East visit Him. After they leave the house where the infant Jesus is living with Joseph and Mary, Joseph is warned in a dream to take Jesus to Egypt until God says otherwise. King Herod wants to kill Jesus. Herod is so intent on being god and king of Judea--being the boss of everyone--that, unlike the Magi, he not only refuses to worship the newborn King, he wants Him dead.

Herod deserves to be compared to other murderous despots in history, like Adolf Hitler or Vladimir Putin. But let’s not sidestep the truth. We’re in no more of a hurry to worship God than Herod was. We are sinners and we would prefer to reign over our own lives or give our worship to the gifts of God–things like health, wealth, authority, sex, luxury–rather than worshiping God. We are born that way. But being born with an orientation to sin doesn’t make our sinning right. As Paul says in Romans, the human race falls prey to worshiping the creatures rather than the Creator.

We had a video call the other night with our son and our nearly two-year-old granddaughter. She is, in my unbiased view, completely sweet and adorable. But our son tells us that she has a new favorite word: No. We all want to be our own bosses, our own ultimate authorities. So, one thing we all have in common with Herod is that we are sinners bent on self-worship.

Because Herod has learned of the location where prophecy said the Messiah was to be born but didn’t know the child’s identity, he orders that every male child under the age of two be murdered. This is a disturbing tale. Years ago, after reading a sermon I had preached on these verses from Matthew and posted on my blog, a man in Northumberland in England wrote to me angrily, “The Christmas story tells us that if your son is threatened, then you save him and let the others take their chances.”

The man’s anger was maybe understandable but, I think, misdirected for two reasons. First, He seemed to think that God had willed the deaths of these babies. If there’s anything I’m sure of about our God, it’s that He Who formed us and loves us, never would will the murder of any other parents’ children. This is the God Who told Isaac and the people of Israel not to sacrifice their children. 

Even our lesson for today shows that God didn't will the murder of the innocents. There are three places in the lesson that note the fulfillment of prophecy. Two of them indicated by the prepositions used in the original Greek that the fulfillment of prophecies cited was what God desired. But in verse 17, where we're told of Herod's murderous act, the citation says that the weeping of Rachel for her children would happen because of the sinfulness of human beings, not because God desires it to happen.

But second and more importantly, that angry man forgot that God used Joseph to save Jesus from Herod’s armed troops so that Jesus, God the Son, could later go to the cross. There, Jesus bore the sins of us all, setting us free from the damnation and eternal separation from God we all deserve. Jesus wasn’t spared execution when Joseph whisked Him off to Egypt, any more than you and I are spared the horrors of a universe drowning in sin and death. Instead, Jesus was the last of the Bethlehem innocents to die.

Jesus would also be executed by a human race, Jew and Gentile, bent on having and being its own gods and kings. The difference between His death and the deaths of the other babies in Bethlehem and the deaths of us all is that His life and His life alone offered on a cross paid the eternal debt we all owe God for our sin. 

Jesus fulfilled the prophecy given to Isaiah: “...he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.” (Isaiah 53:5) 

Despite what my angry commentator said, God didn’t spare Jesus on that horrible day in Bethlehem and let everyone else “take their chances.” Jesus was born so that He could die for us. Jesus knew this. Referring to His death on the cross as His baptism, Jesus once said: “I have a baptism to undergo, and what constraint I am under until it is completed!” (Luke 12:50)

The death of the sinless Christmas Child on the cross at Calvary was the perfect act of obedience to God that you nor I neither desire nor are able to perform. It was for His submission to death on the cross that, “God [the Father] exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name…” (Philippians 2:9)

Jesus was sent to Egypt not to be spared the hardships, adversities, and death of this world, but so He enter into those hardships, adversities, and death and redeem them by winning an eternity of peace, rest, and salvation for all who believe in Him. 

Herod was a king who wanted power for himself. Jesus is the King Who surrendered the advantages of His deity in order to make it possible for each of us to be justified by God’s grace through faith in Him alone. 

Jesus freely gives blessings none of us deserve: forgiveness, God’s presence with us through the joys and sorrows of this life, and life with God that never ends. 

Because Jesus went to the cross, we can say with the apostle Paul: “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:32)  

Jesus is no haughty, distant despot. Although our sin put Him on His cross, He makes us His friends. 

Paul also writes elsewhere in the Bible: “For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!” (Romans 5:10) 

This King wants to give us everlasting life with God, a life that begins now as, by the power of His Word and the Sacraments, we can say, “Jesus is my God and my King!”

Friends, Jesus is our only hope and sure foundation today, in this new year, and always. He’s now accomplished all that He came to do for us, which is why the last of the Bethlehem innocents would declare with His dying breath on the cross, “It is finished!” This year, you can trust in Jesus and what He has done for you. You can claim Him as your gracious, loving King! Amen

Law and Morality, Inextricably Linked

This morning's top story in The Cincinnati Enquirer recounted how a driver, trying to avoid a Labor Day weekend drunk-driving checkpoint, allegedly made a U-turn, led police on a chase through several area communities, hit and killed a motorcyclist, and then fled the scene. If allegations against Kenneth Haugabook are true--and it appears they are true, this is a very serious matter, especially his decision to leave his unsuspecting victim to die.

If that sounds like preacher talk, consider the assessment of Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones:

"He [Haugabook] caused the life of a person to be taken because he was avoiding the police," ...Jones said. "It's a tragedy and it's terrible."

Jones called Haugabook selfish.

"He never stopped or gave aid," the sheriff said. "There are some people in our society who are very sick and care more about themselves.

"This is a very mean-spirited individual," Jones said.

What so interests me about Jones' words is that, on the surface, they don't seem to reflect his legal assessment of Haugabrook's actions. They appear to reflect a purely moral judgment.

Is that right? Should a public official, especially one who's charged with the impartial enforcement of laws in a pluralistic society, talk about morality?

I suppose that if Jones' words reflected a particular sect's notions of morality, it would raise concerns for me. Law enforcement officials shouldn't use their offices or on-duty hours to advance their particular moral views. And all public officials should, I think, be respectful of diverse moral values that exist in our pluralistic society. (Even that last statement is a moral value, I know.)

But one would be hard-pressed to name any religion or worthy philosophy that would call the actions Haugabrook is alleged to have committed anything but wrong.

They also happen to be illegal.

All of which raises an interesting point: Law, every law, even laws dealing with seemingly mundane issues, are meant to enforce the common moral values of a society or community. We citizens "hire" police, sheriffs, prosecuting attorneys, and presidents, in part, to enforce the basic moral values to which we all--Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, Muslims, Christians, and others--share.

We have speed laws. for example, because of moral values, because as a society, we deem it wrong to waste a non-renewable resource like the gas in our tanks and because speeding vehicles endanger other motorists, pedestrians, and motorcyclists. Conservation of resources and of human life are moral values.

None of this is to say that there aren't lousy laws on the books or that some politicians don't hide behind moral niceties to make sweetheart deals that fatten their wallets or that they don't engage in pork barrel spending that enhances their chances for re-election. The law is abused by legislators, courts, and executive decision makers.

But any pol who has a hand in such shenanigans will always try to cover his or her true motives by hiding behind a posited value--some certain moral good--as a reason for their action.

In a pluralistic society, laws are designed to enforce our common moral values. Societal values change over time, often because of enlightenment or mature consideration. Prohibition has been first written into and then out of our Constitution, for example. Both actions reflected the country's values at the moments of their passage. Laws put on the books always demonstrate what societies believe to be right and wrong at any given time. When values change, so do laws.

Sheriff Jones' assessment of one motorist's alleged acts, I think, reflect the great Western moral tradition given to us by Jews and Christians. This tradition makes much of love of God and neighbor. One of Jesus' most famous parables dealt with a Samaritan helping a Jew who had been brutally beaten by thieves and ends with His exhortation to do the same thing for all our hurting neighbors. [Most importantly maybe, as shown by historian Rodney Stark in his amazing, The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success, Christianity freed the West to use reason to discern what is right or wrong, how to apply God's call (and command) to live lovingly with our neighbors, in specific and changing circumstances.]

But Sheriff Jones' assessment of Haugabrook's alleged actions also reflects the collective moral judgment of our pluralistic society today: It's selfish to hurt someone and leave them to die. May we never change our mind on that as a society!